His human side washummingin comfort on a deep, primal level that went beyond his rational control. This was it. He was vibrating, just like the extra strings on Valir’s lyre. It would be easy to shatter the crystal now, but did he really want to? What he had felt wasgoodandbeautiful. Why would he want to destroy that?
Because it’s a lie. Nothing was ever as perfect as this crystal, nothing living anyway. Carefully balancing on the narrow line between his order-loving and his chaos-embracing side, he reached into his pocket, taking the remaining Activator into his hand. He had one try, and one try only, but he wouldn’t need more. For once, he was certain.
He opened his eyes just as he threw the powder on his hand touching the crystal seal. The Activator sparkled for a moment in the white light, before the entire thing erupted into a cold, blue fire.It’s a lie!Dissonance disrupted the false harmony within himself, and just as he had resonated with the crystal, the imperfection propagated back to the perfect white object. A single crack appeared right under hishand, sharp edges that broke the white light into a colorful rainbow. For a heartbeat, both were there, OrderandChaos, but that couldn’t last. Accompanied by a loud and bright clinking sound, the entire seal burst into a billion shards, raining down and breaking again and again until they landed on Kraghtol as dust he had to wipe from his eyes.
Where the disk had been, there was a dark hole gaping in the giant door, which was slowly opening to the inside by the force of the blast, in unsettling silence. The way was clear. He looked left and right. Even Valir had a determined look on his face. In silent agreement, they stepped forward into the darkness.
The inside of the building was similar to the outside in one regard: it was huge. Without so much as a corridor, the door led directly into a hall so vast Kraghtol couldn’t see any walls except for the one they came from. Darkness fled in all directions, broken only by occasional stone columns shooting up to an unseen ceiling, and the only indication he had that it didn’t go on forever were their footsteps echoing loudly. Just like in his dreams, the thick walls dampened the sounds of the swamp until they were drowned out completely.
Behind them, there was movement as multiple large bodies poured into the building after them, still holding their distance. Valir flinched at the sound, and Kraghtol felt his heartbeat quicken, but he had the odd certainty that they were not in danger.
“I think it’s the demons,” he whispered, which didn’t seem to make the noble any happier.
“Demons, as in multiple of them? Just wonderful, I always dreamed of ending my life in a dark room with savage demon beasts.”
“They won’t attack. They’re probably just… drawn to this place,” Kraghtol answered, leaving out the ‘Just like me.’
“It feels kind of ominous,” Dagna chimed in, sounding uncharacteristically nervous as well.
“There’s a large temple in Greylune, where the elves pray to their moon god,” Valir said. “I’ve visited it once, and this feels… similar. Only way eviler. Are you sure we should be here, Kragh?”
The half-orc didn’t respond. The truthful answer would have been no. He wasn’t sure. He was torn. One half of him couldn’t be more excited, even though he could not tell why. The other half was abhorred, agreeing completely with Valir on wanting to turn around and run. It wasn’t hard to understand, not after what he had just done to get here. This place was brimming with the Principle of Chaos.Of course, Valir didn’t like it.
“It will be alright,” he finally whispered. “It’s just like in my dream.” Somehow, his hand had found Valir’s in the darkness, and he gave him a reassuring squeeze. Then, louder, he turned to the darkness surrounding them.
“We’re here. Are you there, oracle?”
“You have come.” The voice echoed from the walls and seemed to come from everywhere at once. Kraghtol had expected this, but Dagna and Valir almost jumped.
“Who’s there?” asked the dwarf, looking around in the darkness.
As before, it was hard to tell if the voice was old or young, but Kraghtol was reasonably sure by now that it was female. And she seemed amused. “Your friend, the alchemist, has called me oracle. And in a way, that is true.”
“You know, it would be rather nice to actually see who we are talking to,” Valir called out. Kraghtol could hear his tone trembling, but it was every bit hisofficialnoble-born voice.
“It has been quite some time since last someone laid eyes on me. I shall grant you your request. Step towards the light, my friends.”
Suddenly, torches lit up far into the hall with a flash of blue fire before turning yellow. They illuminated a small island in the sea of darkness. Valir muttered something about ‘friends’ under his breath, but now that they had a visible destination, the three of them approached the light.
In the middle of the spot stood a chair. No, Kraghtol corrected himself, not a chair. It was a throne, made of the same stone as the surrounding hall. Next to and behind this throne, he could finally see the demons. Not two of them were alike; he thought he recognized the one which had attacked them, but there were more: masses of limbs, maws and claws, sitting or standing at attention like well-behaved puppies. Their focus was not on the approaching group, however, but on the person in front of the throne.
She was a woman. A woman like he had never seen before: she was an orc, or at least half-orc. Her green skin was even deeper than Kraghtol’s, and the rest of her body was equally imposing. It was unusual for Kraghtol to meet other people at eye-level, and for a moment, he felt as weak and small as he had while under the effect of the potion. Her dark hair was styled into a complicated knot, adding even more to her perceived height.
The most unusual thing about her, though, was her dress. Kraghtol wasn’t even sure it was so much as a dress, or rather a suit, or somethingin-between. It was hard to tell any specifics about the cut because of the color. Or rather, the colors. In an equally mesmerizing and confusing swirling display, the suit wasn’t content with just showing one or two colors. Instead, it had them all at the same time, waging war for attention with every minuscule movement of the wearer. Kraghtol couldn’t look at it for a long time without feeling dizzy, so he concentrated on the woman’s face, showing her tusks shamelessly in a fine smile.
“I expected you, Kraghtol, bastard of the beast,” she said. Her voice was no less disturbing nearby than far away. It still sounded like it came from everywhere at once.
“Now that’s rude,” Valir remarked, and Kraghtol winced inwardly. He shook his head and whispered, “No, it’s… my actual name. I’ll explain later.”
“I do not know the ones accompanying you, however,” she continued. If she had heard the whispered exchange, she completely ignored it. “A human and a dwarf. Curious. It has been a long time since one of your kind came to my halls.”
She focused Valir and Kraghtol could see the goosebumps on the noble’s skin.
“These are Dagna and Valir, and they are my friends,” he said with a firm voice, and only after he had spoken the words did he realize how naturally they had come.
The orc woman nodded. Her movements carried a sense of grace that seemed out of place.
“Perhaps you could introduce yourself, too,” asked Dagna. “Because I have absolutely no clue what’s happening and why the oracle in the middle of the deadly swamp is a green skin — no offense, Kragh.”
